There's Sometimes a Buggy

We declare the year 1930 CANCELLED prior to discussing John Ford's UP THE RIVER & Frank Borzage's LILIOM (little known today - but based on the same source as the musical CAROUSEL). We consider the different (maybe opposite) ways in which these Fox movies portray sympathy for the victims of class society without criticizing the system, in contrast to a Warner Bros.-style treatment of similar material.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Up the River (dir. John Ford)

0h 39m 16s: Liliom (dir. Frank Borzage)

1h 15m 23s: Fall Cinemagoing Update - Li Yu and TIFF's "Seeing the Unseen"

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

In our second Jennifer Jones episode, we defend William Dieterle's LOVE LETTERS (1945), putting it in the context of 40s psychiatric melodramas and WWII amnesia movies, and consider the good and bad of what Ernst Lubitsch's CLUNY BROWN (1946) has to say about female sexuality and English complacency.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: Love Letters (dir. William Dieterle)

1h 00m 28s: Cluny Brown (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)

1h 31m 37s: Fall Cinemagoing Update

1h 33m 28s: Listener Mail with Evan Dokos and Todd Murry

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

In our first 1930 Warner Bros. episode, we consider DAWN PATROL as an early example of cahier hero 'Auward 'Awks's philosophy of masculinity, and note the emergence of the Warners ethos in Mervyn Leroy's PLAYING AROUND, including consciousness of class, sympathy for criminals, vaudeville Yiddish characters, and a touch of patriarchal anxiety.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: The Dawn Patrol (dir. Howard Hawks)

0h 39m 19s: Playing Around (dir. Mervyn Leroy)

1h 16m 29s: Fall Cinemagoing Update – Euzhan Palcy

1h 23m 06s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

"Autumn is the most bourgeois month," as Keats said. Elise and Dave prove this is so by exploring Nora Ephron's two autumnal Upper West Side romantic comedies, WHEN HARRY MET (1989) and YOU'VE GOT MAIL (1998), a remake of Ernst Lubitsch's THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER. Elise passes judgment on the two latter movies on the basis of her extensive experience of working in retail and intimate knowledge of the Bookstore Wars of the turn of the millennium. Dave defends Bernie Bros.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: Topic Intro & When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner)

0h 32m 05s: You've Got Mail (dir. Nora Ephron) & The Shop Around the Corner (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)

1h 45m 45s: TIFF Autumn Schedule unboxing

1h 59m 51s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

In the first MGM episode of our Studios Year by Year series, the year is 1930, and Elise and Dave watch as the straggler studio struggles with the challenges of early sound in THE BISHOP MURDER CASE, starring Basil Rathbone as Philo Vance, with two credited directors (Elise posits a third, unknown genius). Then we switch over to a Marion Davies comedy, NOT SO DUMB, directed by King Vidor, Dave's favourite director for many reasons that he enumerates in the episode, none of them relevant to this movie. We conclude that Lynn Fontanne stage vehicles are not the forte of either Vidor or Davies; however, Donald Ogden Stewart is on hand to provide handsy amusement. "Guess who!" "It was you!" Too bad that's not the movie's most problematic moment (trigger warning—our first—included in segment). Also: some reflections on the sadism of comedy and the role of the "other man" in film comedy.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: The Bishop Murder Case (dirs. Nick Grindé & David Burton)

0h 52m 59s: Not So Dumb (dir. King Vidor)

1h 38m 28s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Join Dave and Elise for episode one of our (near-)complete filmography series on the great Jennifer Jones (née Phylis Isley). We provide a few preliminary thoughts re: our take on the Jones/Selznick synergy and then dive right into the films. Song of Bernadette kicks things off with quite a blessed bang, situating our star at the conceptual vanishing point between the instinctual and the ineffable; while the following year's Since You Went Away dabbles with domesticating the Jones persona (as a nod to the war effort, y'know), for the first and perhaps the only time.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: Introduction to Jennifer Jones

0h 16m 15s: Song of Bernadette (1943) dir. Henry King

1h 21m 37s: Since You Went Away (1944) dir. John Cromwell

2h 19m 38s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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* Find Elise's latest published film piece – "Elaine May's Male Gaze" – in the Elaine May issue of Bright Wall/Dark Room*

*And Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Elise and Dave launch their extended excursion into oligarchic auteurism with a pair of films from the studio whose special touch may very well have been its hands-off approach to directorial oversight. Certainly Behind the Make-Up (aka The Feeder) makes a very interesting companion piece to Dorothy Arzner's later masterpiece Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) – a film discussed on this very feed earlier in 2019. It stars William Powell, Kay Francis, Fay Wray, and Hal Skelly, none of whom would wind up becoming intimately associated with Paramount (although an argument could be made for Francis).

Then we turn our attention to that great cinematic marvel of the early sound era – the picture that proved talkies could move! In fact, filmed out of Paramount's Astoria Queens facility, Applause rambles magnificently all over pre-Chrysler Building and Empire State Building Manhattan. It's also damned moving, with a performance from Helen Morgan that'll leave you wondering why any of us were born.

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:

Behind the Make-Up aka The Feeder (dirs.. Robert Milton & Dorothy Arzner)

0h 40 17s:

Applause (dir Rouben Mamoulian)

1h 28m 39s:

Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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*Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Dave and Elise close out their discussion of the Dietrich/Sternberg septet with three films that examine three distinct paths (and aftermaths) to victory for the Dietrich persona. From superhero weepie to Henry James inflected Game of Thronery to a kind of class-conscious Carmen– this one's got it all!

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: Blonde Venus

0h 33m 00s: The Scarlet Empress

1h 09m 52s: The Devil is a Woman

1h 42m 54s: Elise and Dave rank the 7 films

1h 52m 01s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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*Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Welcome to the first installment of Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto! This time out, it's part one of our mammoth conversation covering Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg's inspired 1930s collaborations. We saw the films as part of The TIFF Lightbox's recently concluded retrospective, Insolent Enigma/Arrogant Auteur. Join us as we feel our way toward a critical counternarrative to the anemic analyses which have plagued the skin-deep celebration of this cinematic septet for too long. (Much of our discussion takes place in dialogue with Andrew Sarris' 1960s monograph The Films of Josef von Sternberg.)

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: Preamble

0h 22m 27s: The Blue Angel

0h 46m 00s: Morocco

1h 15m 43s: Dishonored

1h 48m 30s: Shanghai Express

2h 11m 23s: Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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*Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

This week's episode serves as both a prolegomenon to our imminent Hollywood Studios Year By Year series and as a wistful look back to Dave's teen years, when he picked up Ethan Mordden's freewheeling speed date with Old Hollywood History and discovered a new way to split the difference between Adornian culture industry theory and auteurist ontology.

Journey back to a time when oligopoly really meant something and most entertainment companies weren't somehow beholden to Disney. We quote from and quibble with Mordden's characterizations of the quintessential qualities of Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Fox, RKO, and Universal (Dave gets particularly riled up about yet another slight to the sacred memory of Carl Laemmle Jr.).

What's your favourite Golden Age Studio? We want to know!

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s: The Hollywood Studios

2h 15m 43s Listener Mail with Todd Murry

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*Read Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre